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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: AT&T strikes again
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 03-21-2011 07:14 AM
quote: Joe Redifer
I don't think anyone on this forum would think it served them right. You have the wrong impression of us here at Film-Tech. We fight for justice and the American way... even if that is an oxymoron.
Sorry ... what I meant is that if someone leaves their wireless router with no security on it whatsoever, an argument you would hear from the technically literate is that they only have themselves to blame if others start logging on and stealing bandwidth from them: the analogy often used being that if you leave your front door wide open after you leave for work, well, it's not very surprising if you get home and find that your house has been burgled. The argument from the less technically savvy would be that consumer gear should not be sold in a way that allows this to happen. But there again, has anyone seriously suggested that cars should only be sold if it's impossible to crash them? I'm not defending the police arresting innocent people at all (though these people could have helped themselves a bit more) - just pointing out that if you go down the legal route in an attempt to combat consumer-level piracy, you let yourself in for a PR nightmare.
quote: Bobby Henderson
With the type of bandwidth cap AT&T is proposing (150GB per month) I can see a lot of different kinds of business being affected. Take the growing trend of "telecommuting" for instance. People work at home to save on the rising costs of commuting and the company saves money on office space. Most telecommuting arrangements need serious bandwidth for sharing data and video for each employee.
Interesting. I work from home probably one day every couple of weeks or so, and during that day I use Outlook Web Access to stay in touch with work; but I wouldn't have thought that this would come close to 150gb/month, even if I was self-employed and working at home full-time. I can see that videoconferencing would put you up against this if you spent hours each day at it: I guess I just don't operate in a professional environment where that is normal. My own home broadhand has a 40gb/month cap, and I've never even used half of it, even in months where I've downloaded big service packs and/or spent a long time on Skype. If I started streaming or downloading BD-quality films (40-50gb each) on a regular basis I soon would, though. And the last time I installed Adobe Creative Suite and then immediately downloaded all the updates, IIRC the download came to about 300mb; and so you'd have to do that several hundred times a month in order for a 150gb limit to become an issue.
I suspect that the long-term solution to this will be a business model whereby suppliers and customers of data split the up-front cost. For example, Netflix does a deal with the major ISPs whereby it pays them so much a month, in return for which Netflix data is exempted from their customers' monthly bandwidth allowance. The cost of that bandwidth is then incorporated into your Netflix subscription: the online equivalent of what they do at the moment, whereby you get post-free envelopes to send your DVDs back in, but the cost of the postage is built into your monthly fee.
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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006
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posted 03-30-2011 04:43 PM
I worked for "the phone company" for almost 15 years. One thing you have to remember is that "AT&T" is no longer the "AT&T" it used to be. Several years ago it was taken over by "SBC", a bunch of the most money grubbing bastards you'll ever encounter.
They kept the "AT&T" name, but then began running the "old AT&T" into the ground, as they have done with every one of the other (more than a dozen) phone companies they plundered begining in the late 1990's.
BE PREPARED FOR UNPLEASENT SURPRISES!
I finially got around to reading the entire new TOS agreement today. Aside from the data caps, you are agreeing to let them transition you from standard AT&T DSL service to "U-VERSE DSL" at their disecretion. This already happened to me.
Last summer, I found out I had to move because my house had mold & dry rot. I found a nice apartment in the same neighborhood - - only 5 blocks away from my old house.
I still have sets of cable-maps for this area. My new place was fed out of the same central office and I was on the same main-cable-feeder route.
This was NOT a major engineering challange! It should have required nothing more than 'swinging a few jumpers" on the main
distribution frame at the CO and the B-box closest to my new place.
They got EVERY aspect of my service order wrong. It took them 3 weeks to get my new service up & running. They missed FOUR promised "service due dates".
Then, they told me that I could no longer get "standard DSL" in my area and that all new orders (and eventually everyone in this neighborhood) would be converted to "U-Verse DSL" service.
The end result:
> The U-verse DSL is costing me almost twice as much as
my old DSL.
> U-Verse DSL required a different type of modem, which
wound up costing me an additional $75.
> My old 'standard' DSL CPE was a modem/router/wireless
gateway. The U-verse modem is a MODEM ONLY. So, if you
want to retain you home wi-fi, you've got to shell out
even more money for a wireless router.
(fortunately - I had an old one sitting around so I
didn't incurr the cost of also buying one)
> They also moved me to a more expensive phone service
tier.
- - and if you call too much to complain they flag your
account as a "problem customer".
So, if you have "standard DSL" service from AT&T, be
prepared at some point in the future to be moved to
"U-Verse DSL" - - wether you like it or not. According
to their new TOS agreement, they can do it at any time.
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